Saturday, October 18, 2014

Here’s a factoid you might find interesting: none of the other FLOTUS’s that I’ve had the honor of reflecting have ever campaigned for anyone other than their husbands. Not so Lady M: she spends nearly as much time on the campaign and fund raising trail as Big Guy these days.

Most recently she was stumping in Florida for Charlie Crist:

“We need you to cast your ballot starting next Monday for early voting,” Obama said at a gymnasium at the Central Florida Fair grounds. “I’m asking you, vote early.”

I’m sorry to report that this took place yesterday, while I was confined to my hazmat suit, hence this:

I thought we had ditched this ill-fitting frock that even a mini-me couldn’t help.

Meanwhile, in continuing Ebolagate coverage, this is disappointing; we have yet another instance where Big Guy’s staff “let him down.” In fact he’s said to be “seething” about the was his little people have handled the Ebola crisis.

Beneath the calming reassurance that President Obama has repeatedly offered during the Ebola crisis, there is a deepening frustration, even anger, with how the government has handled key elements of the response.

Those frustrations spilled over when Mr. Obama convened his top aides in the Cabinet room after canceling his schedule on Wednesday. Medical officials were providing information that later turned out to be wrong. Guidance to local health teams was not adequate. It was unclear which Ebola patients belonged in which threat categories.

“It’s not tight,” a visibly angry Mr. Obama said of the response, according to people briefed on the meeting.

Not “tight?” – shoot, it’s not even in near the corral yet.

So in order to get a grip on this spreading menace, Big Guy appointed an Ebola Czar, “just to make sure that we are crossing all the t’s and dotting all the i’s going forward.” Funny, that’s not what my understanding of whata Czar’s job involves. Butt I could be wrong.

Tzar Nicholas and his troops

In related news, BHO also advised us that he isn’t “philosophically opposed” to considering restricting travel to the U.S. from the three Ebola-stricken West African nations. Well, that’s good news Aristotle, butt we’re talking about a mutating virus, not a philosophy class. And your job is to run the government and protect the citizens not participate in a freshman debate on Schopenhauer v. Nietzsche.

And regarding our new Czar’s qualifications: he’s perfect. Who better to fix all of our Ebola PR gaffes, mis-steps and “communication problems” than the man who spent years cleaning up after Joey B? Dead on pick: a partisan loyalist with extensive experience in…politics…and spin! So take that, Mr. Ebola.

Friday, October 17, 2014

I note that Democrats everywhere are trying to sidestep that designation by spreading the party line that Ebola is not a threat and there’s no reason to stop flights in and out of West Africa just because it’s a horrible disease that kills 70% of it’s victims. And West Africa used to be the only place it lived.

Dr. Friedman is the keynote spokesmouth for the official position that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself:

“We remain confident that Ebola is not a significant public health threat to the United States,” he testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “We know Ebola can be stopped with rapid diagnosis, appropriate triage and meticulous infection-control practices in American hospitals.” – NY Daily News

None of which occurred in the case of Duncan Thomas, butt don’t let that inconvenient fact impair your judgment.

Pizza delivery!

Dr. Friedman made his case against banning travel from West Africa in cogent testimony to Congress yesterday; arguing that if we don’t let Africans fly the friendly skies, they’ll just arrive here “over land” where it will be impossible to catch and monitor them if they are showing signs of illness:

Dr. Frieden said banning travel would mean the U.S. won’t be able to check people for fever and contacts if they arrive in the country through other means, such as over land. “We wouldn’t be able to provide all that information as we do now to state and local health officials,” he said. -WSJ

It’s probably just me butt I think I would have taken a slightly different tact, as that makes it sound like maybe we should be doing more to close our porous borders.

I think I might even start looking for a different spokesmouth altogether if I were Big Guy, whereas Dr. Friedman argued himself into a complete paradox during a press briefing just the day before his testimony.

A reporter said, "In a video message to countries in West Africa that are experiencing Ebola outbreaks, President Obama told residents in these countries in West Africa that they can't get the disease by sitting next to somebody on a bus. Did the CDC vet that message before it was released and posted on US embassy websites, and is it true that a person runs absolutely no risk of contracting Ebola on public transportation such as a bus?"

FRIEDEN: Yes, CDC vetted the message -- and, yes, we believe it's accurate. I think there are two different parts of that equation. The first is, uh, "If you're a member of the traveling public and are healthy, should you be worried that you might have gotten it by sitting next to someone?" and the answer is, no. Second, uh, "If you are sick and you may have Ebola, should you get on a bus?" and the answer to that is also, no. You might become ill! You might have a problem that exposes someone around you. - CNS News

Anyway, I don’t know what our real assessment of the Ebola situation is, all I know is that this is the official government issued uniform I’ve been instructed to wear until further notice:

Hi! It’s me! MOTUS! I’m impermeable!

It strikes me as a bit of overkill as I’ve been slogging around in the muck here for nearly six years without any protection. And while it is cute, as you can see it takes the edge off my reflective capabilities - which could be a career-ender for a mirror. My understanding is that this suit is now considered standard operational protocol butt knowing how casual we are about following protocol around here, I don’t intend to wear it during working hours. Of course, if I’m required to fly anywhere…

Anyway, it appears we’ve successful managed the Republicans attempt at needless fear-mongering.This Pew push poll clearly indicates that we are not smart enough to be afraid of Ebola. And thank goodness! The midterms are right around the corner.

In the mean time, please make sure your seat backs and tray tables are in their full upright position and your seat belt is correctly fastened. Also, we request that all mobile phones, pagers, radios and remote controlled devices be turned off for the full duration of the flight, as these items might interfere with the official messages and information your government wishes you to hear.

Thursday, October 16, 2014

I’m pretty sure you’ve seen Lady M’s Vine video (note to self: redundant) by now, butt in case you just fell off a turnip truck, here it is again:

Brought to you by the DNC

How on earth, you ask, did the turnip dance “turn up?” You’ll be shocked to hear it was all preplanned as part of one of our “#askthefirstlady” social media events. The question was asked in such a way (vapid, by some accounts) as to give Lady M a lead-in to her really cool rap and turnip dance. The intent, in case it was lost on you, was to make MO, and by association her favorite purple root vegetable, appear to be really hip by “rapping” it. As the WaPo explains:

Never has a taproot lent itself so well to meme-ification, for which we can thank rappers 2 Chainz (“Turn Up”), Roscoe Dash (“All the Way Turnt Up”) and Lil Jon (“Turn Down For What”).

Excuse me wile I turn up All dese hoes be choosen but I'm turnt up all the way I don't turned up on da road I be turned up round da globe

Again, I “cant show no mo” because, well, you know.

So how cool is that!? RAPPING! For a FLOTUS I mean?

Oh yeah, I’m all that cool.

And not only that, butt she brought along the house white boy to celebrate the annual fall harvest event at the White House “kitchen garden,” aka the Organic Garden of Good and Evil.

He’s pretty cool too; in a white hot sort of way, right?

Meanwhile, on the Ebola front: Big Guy was forced to cancel two campaign/fundraising trips in order to address the spreading threat. Having been assured in the past that Big Guy can “do two things at once” and needn’t suspend his plans to address other grave issues such as Benghazi and ISIS beheadings, I just have to ask: is it time to panic now?

“I want people to understand that the dangers of you contracting Ebola, the dangers of a serious outbreak are extraordinarily low,” Obama told reporters after meeting for roughly two hours with aides in the Cabinet Room. “But we are taking this very seriously at the highest levels of government.”

No, not yet; we are in the very best of hands, and they are taking it “very seriously.”

I guess they really do think we’ve just fallen off a turnip truck. To re-quote the WaPo report:

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

A new poll from the Washington Post and ABC News shows 67 percent of people say they would support restricting entry to the United States from countries struggling with Ebola. Another 91 percent would like to see stricter screening procedures at U.S. airports in response to the disease’s spread.

I think the last time that many Americans agreed on anything was during WWII, and even then some had second thoughts later. So clearly, this poll is bogus. Allow me to restructure the poll in a way that will allow us to get a more useful, less racist answer:

We have retuned to the popular Chicago Rules for this poll: vote when you wish, as often as you wish

So if you don’t wish to be placed under surveillance your choice is simple: racist or non-racist, yes or no. Choose wisely, weedhopper, or you may end up being surveilled anyway.

In other news today I see that we now have another Ebola victim in our country despite having been assured by Big Guy personally and his CDC spokesmouth that Ebola is very unlikely to ever hit our shores, and in the unlikely event that it does we are fully prepared to deal with it. Now we have not one, butt 2 homegrown victims - not even included in the 70 on the watch list because they had donned their hazmat suits and were following all of the CDC’s protocols. I think we may have just moved into that Iraq-era gray zone known as the “unknown unknowns.” Butt don’t worry; we’ve got our best minds working on it.

And speaking of Iraq, this just in to the New York Times : Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq have been found!Despite having originally been reported in 2005 – 2011 the Pentagon kept this information secret for reasons we can only speculate on, butt might include the fact that the WMD weren’t handled according to protocol and caused some injuries. Over this same timeframe the Pentagon was apparently successful in thwarting all of the crack investigative reporters from the NYT and other storied media outlets who were trying to get to the bottom of the WMD issue. Of course it’s still all Bush’s fault:

What else is your government lying to you about, do you suppose?

One of these men lied to us, choose one: and remember – your answers are being monitored for racism and evidence of white privilege.

For starters, remember that little brain fart she had in Iowa resulting in her mis-mispronounciation of Bruce Braley’s name?

Well, cognitive scientists, psycholinguists and cognitive neuroscientists have given her a pass:

It turns out that these kinds of slips of the tongues, or "spoonerisms," as they're called, are surprisingly common, and reveal a lot about how our brains organize and process language.

While I believe that plain vanilla old linguists would agree with me that MO’s goof-up was technically a malapropism not a spoonerism, who am I to call it a lack of pies (pack of lies)?

Some say that whenever MO opens her pie hole, there’s a lack of pies.

I’d also like to point out that the CDC has been providing us all with a lack of pies about Ebola too.

Apparently we’re safe from Ebola, what we have to worry about is the CDC itself.

“These events should never have happened,” CDC Director Thomas Frieden said Friday in a conference call with reporters. The American people “may be wondering whether we’re doing what we need to do to keep them safe and to keep our workers safe,” he said. “I’m disappointed, and frankly I’m angry about it.”

So there, don’t worry: just like Big Guy, CDC Director Frieden is mad as hell that his little people let him down.

So now if you’ll just leave him alone, he’ll get back to the job he was hired to do: sealing the hick (healing the sick).

If I could give my younger self just one piece of advice, it would be this: Stop being so afraid! That's really what strikes me when I look back – the sheer amount of time I spent fangled up in tears (tangled up in fears) and doubts that were entirely of my own creation. I was afraid of not knowing the answer in class and looking stupid, or worried about what some toy bought (boy thought) of me, or wondering whether the other girls liked my clothes or my hair, or angsting about some offhand comment someone made to me in the lunchroom.

I would love to go back in time and tell my younger self, “Michelle, these middle and high school years are just a tiny blip in your life, and all the slights and embarrassments and heartaches, all those times you got that one question wrong on that test – none of that is important in the theme of stings (scheme of things).

So as you see, the psycholinguists were right; Lady M’s been “angsting” about her tip of the slung (slip of the tongue)her whole life.

Is it any wonder that Lady M suffers from BRF (bitchy resting face) syndrome?

She’s had to get right up there, fight in your race (right in your face), in order to get your attention and get you to eat right.

I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord And I've been waiting for this moment for all my life, Oh Lord Can you feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord, oh Lord

Well, if you told me you were drowning I would not lend a hand I've seen your face before my friend But I don't know if you know who I am Well, I was there and I saw what you did I saw it with my own two eyes So you can wipe off that grin, I know where you've been It's all been a pack of lies

And I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord Well, I've been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh Lord I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord, oh Lord And I've been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh Lord, oh Lord

Well I remember, I remember don't worry How could I ever forget, It's the first time, the last time we ever met But I know the reason why you keep your silence up, No you don't fool me The hurt doesn't show But the pain still grows It's no stranger to mou and ye

Monday, October 13, 2014

Heads up people! It’s time to name another generation. And since there has been an ongoing fight over who falls into which generation, the White House has stepped in to resolve this controversy. Yes, none other than the White House has weighed in to determine what the next generation is to be called and in what year that designation should commence. So don’t tell me we aren’t attending to business around here.

While the chart says “Census Bureau” at the bottom remember that since the Age of Obama “Census” reports directly to the White House.

I note that the WWII generation is referred to as the “Silent Generation,” Tom Brokaw not withstanding

The title is eerily reminiscent of the Showtime political thriller series Homeland which documents an unstable world of surveillance and terrorism in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

I find the name just a bit ironic since, as something like half of this group will have entered this generational designation from a “homeland” other than ours.

Or maybe not

Of course there is still plenty of controversy surrounding this generational designation,as reported in the WaPo.Even a casual observer might wonder why the White House Census Bureau chart shows some generations that include only 15 years (Gen-X) while others cover nearly 25 years (Millennials). Could it be trouble with our number bonds again?

The marketeers, who used to have a lock on determining this sort of thing, had previously agreed on a date for the beginning of the post-millennial generation, 1995, butt not a name. They were still considering several worthy names including my favorite, Re-Gen. Anyway, if you go with the marketers (and let’s face it, who would know better?) the earliest group of “Homelanders” are now hitting college age. No matter what you want to call these kids, I think we have cause for concern over and above the usual idealism of youth:

Brainwashing does that

Butt let’s look at the bright side, at least we have a group of mature Millennials in the White House now helping Big Guy make important decisions; like what to call their successor generation, and how to appeal to their own generation for their votes. And give them credit, they aren’t as stubborn as Gen Xers and Boomers,they’ll back down when ridiculed too much.Which is apparently what happened with their “Emojistrategy.”

The White House has apparently reconsidered its patronizing effort to attract millennials.

The much-touted “emoji strategy” was quietly removed from the administration’s “15 Economic Facts About Millennials” report over the weekend, the Washington Times reported.

The original reported was modeled after a Buzzfeed-style listicle and featured emojis sprinkled throughout.

“This is an example of what we heard about back in 2008, Obama using digital technologies to excite a new, younger demographic,” Natalia Mehlman-Petrzela, an assistant professor of history at the New School University, told The Atlantic on Friday. “In the world of Twitter and Instagram, millennials are using emojis more and more, so it makes sense to use that strategy to appeal to people.”

Rats! I had some really good emojiis I was going to use.

Guess I’ll save them for 2016 when more of our “Homelanders” will be legally able to vote.

Sunday, October 12, 2014

Unless you’ve been living under a rock you’re painfully aware of all the troubles in the world: ISIS on the march, leaving killing fields in its wake and now knocking on the door in Baghdad; Ebola is on the march, leaving killing fields in its wake and now knocking on the door in America; The stock market is “correcting” or something, leaving killing fields in its wake and knocking on the door of the Feds to ease more of that quantitative stuff faster.

This was followed by a flurry of fundraisers on the West Coast, the pinnacle being a grand soiree at Gywneth Paltrow’s Brentwood estate where the spawn of famous actors famously swooned, “you’re so handsome that I can’t speak properly” which is a huge problem whereas her livelihood depends upon her being able to read and speak properly – just like Big Guy’s does.

Alas the security associated with the party was quite burdensome, especially given that the Secret Service’s directive has recently been revised from being “more like Disneyworld” to being “more like Hollywood.” Accordingly, just like in the movies, the entire neighborhood was locked down for hours with residents instructed to shelter in place until they received the all clear. The result of being isolated and ostracized caused little children to cry and neighbors to start a petition to make Gwynnie move out. As of last report, lawyers were swarming all over the area looking for victims of PTSD.